How to Find and Use Media Assets (Legally)

How to Find and Use Media Assets for Free (Legally)

Before pulling images, videos, sound files, or music assets off the web to use in your online media project, it’s important to understand the rules and regulations for use. This resource is a guide to help you understand the basic terminology when looking for free media on the web and a few sources we’ve curated.

Disclosure: This is for informational purposes only and is not to be considered legal advice.
It is your responsibility to consult a qualified lawyer for legal advice.

Understanding the Basic Terminology

Copyright: the exclusive legal right, given to an originator or an assignee to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material, and to authorize others to do the same.

Licensing: grant a license to permit the use of something or to allow an activity to take place.

Public Domain: the state of belonging or being available to the public as a whole, and therefore not subject to copyright (however, check depending on the country you plan to publish your media assets as public domain in one country may not be public domain in another.)

Attribution: acknowledging the author of a work. It most often requires the person’s name with the copyright symbol, and a link back to the source.

Royalty free: this generally indicates paying a one-time fee in exchange for the right to use a photograph, or media asset that is copyrighted, patented or trademarked according to agreed upon terms, with no ongoing license fees due for further use. This does not mean that the work is copyright free. The key here is to read the license terms and conditions, as often there are restrictions on how the asset can be used.

Creative Commons (CC): is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools. CC provides a standardized way to grant copyright permissions to an organization, individual or company’s creative work. Users are then granted a pool of content that can be copied, distributed, edited, remixed, and built upon, all within the boundaries of copyright law.

To avoid copyright infringement when using media assets in your projects, on your website, or on social media be sure to check the terms and conditions. In general make the assumption media assets on the web are copyrighted.

Sources for Free Media & Some Paid Media

Audio & Sound Effects

Free and royalty free sound effects and clips for video editors, movie scores, game designers, and weekend sound warriors. Sound Bible also absorbed the catalog of the well-liked but now defunct PDSounds.org http://soundbible.com/

freeSFX

A thorough library of sound effects from animals to weaponry. The licensing requires crediting and has restrictions. http://www.freesfx.co.uk/

Music

FreeMusicArchive

This is the gold standard for finding quality free music. While the search is in need of improvement, they’ve recently added a section specific to music for videos. http://freemusicarchive.org/curator/video. In addition, the about us page has additional resources in the event you’re not able to find exactly what you’re looking for.

An excellent music that covers all genres and has been used in many major commercial radio shows and podcasts. This is not free but very inexpensive at $5 to $50 per track. www.soundofpicture.com

Video

Video is still a relatively new area for CC media. This section includes sources for free and royalty free video assets, animations and motion graphics.

Vimeo

This often overlooked video platform has a large CC section. However, just because they’ve been marked as CC doesn’t mean they’ve been set up to allow downloading. You may have to use another program to be able to actually download the video. https://vimeo.com/creativecommons

Mazwai

It’s so new and so hip it comes with almost no instructions or explanation. This is a great repository of HD stock video footage. All the downloadable videos are under the Attribution license (CC BY 3.0). As with all downloads, read the license agreement carefully before using these videos. http://mazwai.com

Videvo

A growing archive of video clips, motion graphics and animations. Some free with conditions, others are royalty free (pay for use.) http://www.videvo.net/

YouTube

The largest site for videos has an option for videos to be licensed with CC (not to be confused with closed caption), but it’s hard to search for. You can check licensing on a case by case basis (in the “show more” tab.) A second option is to go to the editor page and use the search function after clicking the cc. https://www.youtube.com/editor CC videos will load based on keywords. For these there is no way to download the videos, so you’ll need to get a YouTube downloader program. For more information on YouTube’s policy on CC videos: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797468?hl=en/

U.S. National Library of Medicine Digital Collections

A historical collection of health related videos with many produced by the US military.

A primarily mobile-based photo sharing network much smaller than Flickr, but it has some good CC photos. It also gives you the option to buy a commercials license for the photos. https://500px.com/creativecommons